Failing Forward....

Correction is essential to power and mastery.  You see, we are all ordinary.  But a master, rather than condemning himself for his "ordinariness," will embrace his ordinariness and use it as a foundation for building the extraordinary.  Instead of giving up, as many ordinary people do, he will use his ordinariness to correct his errors, which is essential in the process of attaining mastery.  You must be able to correct yourself without invalidating or condemning yourself, to accept results and improve upon them.
Mastery - Stewart Emery

There has been a strong focus on the technique of our side heel thrust kicks over the past month.  Sifu Brinker has made it a mission to eradicate improper foot position within our kicks.  As the lead instructor in our school, he has the ability to work with us on this mission but he is unable to complete it on his own.  Each and every one of us must also do our part in order for this mission to be successful.

The position of my foot in the blade has been a key focus the past couple weeks.  I have developed the habit over the years of having my toes just slightly ahead of my heel when doing a side heel kick.  Since on the most part my toes are lower than my heel and my foot is held tight, it has escaped correction.  Just because is has escaped correction, does not mean that it was accepted or is correct.  Now that it has been found, it must be corrected.

The process of correction is one of complete mindfulness whenever I throw a side heel kick.  I have been making use of any mirror that is strategically placed to ensure that to the best of my ability every single kick that I throw going forward has a better foot position.  When I go slow and practice mindfully, I am able to achieve the correct position.  This is possible!  That is encouraging!

What I have found less encouraging is that despite this work, it has not truly become mine yet.  On Saturday we were working on speed and power on the bag.  Things started to fall apart fairly quickly.  If I went slowly, I could get the correct position.  If I added speed and focused on the foot position, then I found that the trajectory of my kick was swinging upward and not thrusting.  If I stopped focusing as much on the blade and instead focused on the power and trajectory, the toes would sneak back forward again.  Then as the minute would move along, fatigue would set in to the point where technique was extremely poor.

How do I proceed forward?  The process of mastery is to accept where you are today and to make steps positive steps forward to improve.  Emery encourages us to accept our ordinariness and use that as a foundation for correction.  There is no room for bad attitude or negative self talk only acceptance and a plan to improve.  Using this model, I will continue to use every mirror that I find to ensure that foot position is correct each time I throw the kick.  I will increase the number of kicks that I am doing each day to work towards building new muscle memory.  I will increase my cardio workouts to help me get over that half way mark when I am working on the bags.  I will document my work and constantly evaluate where I am and correct as needed.

Will every kick be perfect?  Nope.  The only way to absolutely ensure that I will never throw another bad kick as long as I live is to honestly never throw another kick.  That is not an option so I will give my best in each moment and at times I will succeed and at times I will fail.  I will keep trying and failing and correcting and learning and moving forward.  This is the process of mastery.